Command & Conquer 3

I just heard that EA is going ahead with “Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars.” We were told back before they shut down Westwood Studios that their marketing department had concluded that “Tiberium Twilight” wasn’t a good name in case you were wondering why it changed.

Here is a link to scans from the upcoming PC Gamer with more pictures.

First off I don’t remember Mark Scaggs ever being the “Guiding Light” behind the C&C franchise. Brett Sperry, Adam Isgreen and Joe Bostic were the Guiding Light behind the series. You can tell as C&C Generals was the first product in the C&C line that neither worked on and it suffered. It was kind of boring and just wasn’t that much fun. Adam was working at EA but is now over at Petroglyph with Joe Bostic having just finished Star Wars: Empire at War.

The article also points out that the Red Alert universe and the C&C universe are different. Not completely true either. The Red Alert universe is the alternate past where Einstein invented a time machine and stopped Hitler (and the rest of Germany) from rising to power and instead Russia became the enemy of World War II. This alternate past leads to the alternate future of the C&C universe.

And don’t you just love all the heaped on BS talk about “re-imagining the universe and take it to a level you don’t usually see with a game property”?

No mention of the Aliens. You have learned by now that is what is going on haven’t you? Tiberium is how the aliens are terraforming earth to suit them. The third game was supposed to be the final battle when the aliens show up in force to clean up the planets pesky infestation. I also notice the other player in the game isn’t mentioned, C.A.B.A.L. the evil AI that has taken over Nod in the last C&C expansion pack. C.A.B.A.L. was my favorite.

With EA at the helm of the franchise now the world will never see C&C: Continuum, the FPS-ish MMORPG set in the C&C universe. But after what they twisted Earth & Beyond into that is probably a good thing.

I Hate Not Being Uber

I gave up on PvP in WoW. I reached a platau of how high I can go on rank based on my play times. Because I live in Australia I get home about midnight server time on weekdays. If I am lucky I can get into a battleground, sometimes two. Most nights it’s none. I get a few on the weekend but it just isn’t enough for me to get any higher in rank.

The weekends are really my only shot at raiding as well. I just feel like such a damn gimp in the game. All my guildmates are decked out in high end gear and I got crap. Back in Everquest I was one of the top 10 equipped rogues across ALL SERVERS, in WoW I suck. Both my characters suck. I switched to the priest to even have a shot at getting groups which has actually worked, but it doesn’t get me raiding end-game content which is where all the loot and fun is.

I got into a raid the other night where after an hour and a half of prep, we spend another hour taking 3 tried to finally kill a mob my guild regularly kills with their twink characters. The one time I was in this zone with my guild we cleared the whole zone in less than the time it took for this raid to kill one boss.

I was grouped with three guildmates and two pick-ups tonight in Stratholm on a Baron run. One of the two pick-ups said, “Afterlife? Isn’t that an uber guild?”

I gave my, “I live in Australia and can’t raid” excuse. The hunter pointed out that he was a member of GTOAL (Ghetto Twinks of Afterlife) and it was his main rogue that was uber. And the warrior noted that he just started playing again after a long absence.

Now I can’t say we let the guild down because they didn’t. It was entirely my fault. First I accidentally aggro’ed a bunch of mobs as we came out of one of the ziggurats. I sat down on the steps to drink, they moved forward, I got up to go heal them and somehow had aggro from behind. It caused us to wipe.

Then I let myself die twice more because I wasn’t paying attention to my own hit points. I am so used to just paying attention to CT_Raid group boxes which shows my character down with the other people in the various groups that I am not used to having to look up at my portrait to watch my own health. Luckily one of the pick-ups was a paladin who could res me.

We still killed the baron and such but it just seemed like we took forever and we certainly weren’t uber about it.

Audio Books on Itunes

I am downloading my first purchase from Itunes right now. It’s the audio version of V for Vendetta. I am curious how close it is to Alan Moore’s original graphic novel verses the movie which I still haven’t seen. I heard from a lot of people that it stuck very close to the source material. I also heard that Alan Moore, who is no fan of the movie industry (and who would be after what they did to “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”?) has criticized them for dumbing it down. Supposedly he talked about it on a BBC show, but I haven’t been able to find it on the internet. The BBC site won’t let you view it outside of the UK and the source I heard it from had it up on YourTube but it now says the movie was taken down by the poster.

I haven’t downloaded anything before because I like having a physical, tangible item that I can actually hold in my hands. But I am not able to get any unabridged audio books here in Australia. They do sell them they are just hideously expensive.

One thing that really annoyed me is when I went to create my account it has me enter all my personal information and then at the end when I’m entering my credit card’s billing address I find that it is defaulted to the US. So I click the “out side the US link” and pick Australia and it resets the whole thing! I’m back at the Itunes home page. I can understand that the Australian home page is different from the US home page, prices are probably different, etc. But why do I now have start over with the whole account creation thing? And even if there is some really good reason why it couldn’t keep the information I had already entered before passing me to the Australian site, which I don’t believe couldn’t be worked out if they were willing to do the work and code it, WHY THE HELL DIDN’T THEY ASK ME WHAT COUNTRY I WAS IN TO START WITH!!!

Hey! It’s almost done. Bye!

Poking Around

So just about an hour poking around in the blog's template. I managed to shrink the blank edges, delete the lines around the title and around pictures in the posts. All very obvious once I figured out where to look.

I also created a graphic for the left edge. Actually I created two. I'm not going to use either. I am going to go back to my original idea but all the pieces of that are saved on my hard drive at work.

Cuz I'm a Blonde Yah Yah Yaah

Well here it is, me as a blonde. The curl still isn't all the way back and obviously its still withing the goofy length range. I'm also smiling, something somewhat rare in a picture of me. Completly ruins my dark and mysterious image.

I actually appear to be having a 'blonde moment'. I have put up a new image over on the right but it is still showing the old one. I've never had it saved as the normal Blogger profile picture because it messes up the drop shadow. I don’t remember how it messed it up, just that it does… yeah blonde.

Anyway, I have the new picture as part of my profile. Now if I look at my profile it shows the new picture but not when where it displays that part of my profile over on the right. I could just overwrite the old file with the new picture, but that leads me to my second problem. My website where I host my pictures keeps going down. I am just going to mess with it for a few more minutes. If the new picture isn't over there, I gave up and went to bed.

Oblivion Topless Mod

Well forget about paying a few dollars for a new horse model in Oblivion that I brought up a few days ago. We now have the inevitable, user created, free to download, Oblivion Topless Mod! I don’t have the game myself so I can’t try it out and haven’t found any screenshots, though that could be because I haven’t actually looked. Not to say I won’t look, just haven’t done so yet…

The comment thread was interesting the way it quickly dissolved into a froth of 12 year old name calling.

Anyway I have to run, I have to go alert Jack Thompson.

Rambling about E3, My Hair, and WoW

I found out this morning that I will indeed be part of the team going to E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) next month. E3 is the place where all the big companies make all their really big announcements and where we will be showing off our game to the press for the first time. We should have a web site up in the next couple of weeks.

The story behind all that is pretty cool. Since we still haven’t signed a publisher we haven’t made the final milestone payment to Epic for use of the Unreal3 engine. Until we do that we weren’t allowed to show any screenshots to the press. But at the Game Developer’s Conference last month the Epic guys came and had a look at the game where we were showing it behind closed doors. They were very impressed. They especially like the fact that it is something different than what everybody else is doing with their engine, in other words not another First-Person Shooter. They asked why we weren’t showing it off more. We told them because in their contract they said we weren’t allowed to. So they told us they would wave that stipulation and to go ahead and show it off as much as we want.

I will also be doing some panel stuff for the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) at the Supanova pop culture expo (sci-fi and comic book convention) later this month. I’ve gone the previous two years and it’s pretty small. After you’ve been to the San Diego Comic Con everything else pales in comparison. It does look like they have a couple of cool guests this year, like Summer Glau aka River from Firefly & Serenity.

The reactions I’ve been getting to the new blonde hair at work have been all over the board. Just when I think the initial shock is over I run into somebody who just hasn’t happened to see me yet and I get to go through it again. I wore it back in a pony tail today and although it looked really good from the font, it still isn’t long enough to be pulled back. The top hair doesn’t quite reach and the rest of it is only long enough to stick straight out from the back of my head. The odd thing is I suddenly seem to be in the ‘the secret female hair club.’ I keep getting into these intimate conversations with women about secret hair stuff and stylist gossip. Now remember I used to have hair down to my waist but I never was privy to this club before. I’m a little scared actually.

I started to try and take a few pictures and found out that my new expensive digital camera doesn’t have any sort of timer function. I also realized I hadn’t charged the thing since I went off on vacation to Brampton Island back in late October. It had just enough power to copy off all the pictures of that vacation and my trip to San Diego and home to Vegas over Christmas.

I was bored out of my skull tonight in WoW with nothing to do but run laps around Iron Forge while waiting in the queue for one of the battlegrounds. I get so depressed looking at all the cool gear my friends in the guild have and hearing about all the things they are doing. Hardly anybody I know is online by the time I get home or has gone over and is playing horde now.

I did get to go to Zul’Grub with a friend, but only to kill one boss and then they went to kill one of the outdoor dragons which I can’t do because the mob is still worth DKP to my guild. We aren’t allowed to participate in events worth DKP outside the guild.

N3VRF41L Publishing

Auran is in the news with the upcoming launch of N3VRF41L Publishing at next month’s E3. Neverfail was the name of an Auran Executive’s bottled water company, the first such company in Australia. Why ‘leet speak’? I think we’ve all been afraid to ask.

The article is in regards to the Australian government’s lackluster and sluggish response to the needs of the Australian game industry. They make a lot of comparison to the large incentives (tax concessions and other handouts) given to the poorly performing Australian film industry and saying the well performing Australian game industry should be given just as much.

Instead the eroding Australian dollar, excessive taxes, and heavy competition from overseas is turning the Australian game industry into “digital sweatshops” with uncertain cash flow, no intellectual property and narrow margins. The last few months have seen several product cancellations, once prominent Australian developers close their doors and a few more studios that are on the chopping block after having been acquired by larger multinationals.

Then there is this bit:

One exception to that rule is N3VRF41L Publishing, a new operation to be launched next month at the E3 games show in Los Angeles. Backed by Auran Games boss Tony Hilliam, it plans to create its own intellectual property and distribute online.

You can read the full article here.

Mario as Art

I stumbled onto this backwards and the actual site which I’ll link at the bottom of this has the last part first, one of the drawbacks of the ‘top to bottom’ format.

The story in order is that an artist who goes by the name of Poster Child believes that public spaces (sidewalks, parks, etc) have been taken over by ads, and so he battles this creeping loss of public spaces by placing his art in similar situations. He came up with the idea of making the Question Boxes from the Mario games and placing them around town. Some of them they filled with power-ups, cardboard cuts of the coins, flowers and mushrooms from the games.

It looks like the idea started to catch on and other people started doing the same. There are some wonderful pictures of the boxes hanging from light poles, trees, and other places. These are pictures from various places in the United States, Canada and even the United Kingdom.

Then things went bad. Five high school girls put up about 17 Question Blocks around the downtown area of Ravenna Ohio. Somebody called the police about a “suspicious package” on the steps of the Immaculate Conception Church and while the sheriff's department was investigating a few other calls came in about similar packages. Then the Hazardous Material Unit and the Bomb Squad were called in. The girls are facing possible criminal charges.

Here is the link which has links to the news story as well.

I love the whole retro 8-bit Mario as art thing. Here is an older link to some students who made Mario murals on the windows of the E2 building at UCSC using Post-It notes last year.

On a musical front here is a link to a cappella performance of various Nintendo themes. When this went around our office last year I found the name of the group performing it and unfortunately I can’t find it now. I think it’s really crappy that all these sites that I’ve found that host the video don’t list who they are. While searching for the name of the group I did find Maria & Zelda: Big Band Live.

I would love some of these Mario toys. The audio keychain and fridge magnets are especially cool. I’ve seen the little dioramas at one of the local comic shops but unless I got it wrong they were asking that price for one, where on J-List that is the price for the set.

Oblivion

There has been a lot of talk about the latest game in the Elder Scrolls series: Oblivion. I don’t really have any desire to play it myself. I played a bit of the previous game, Marrowind and it just felt too lonely. This was back when I was really into Everquest. I thought the game was just crying out to be multi-player and I was really surprised to see that Oblivion wasn’t. Connie says she played Daggerfall, the one before Marrowind, and played it forever and ever and ever, but she had the same reaction to Marrowind that I did. She was also into Everquest by that time.

But a lot of people are talking about how much they like Oblivion and not minding that it isn’t multi-player. The funny thing is they won’t stop talking about it to each other. My friend’s World of Warcraft guild has a vent channel dedicated to it so that they can talk to each other while they are playing Oblivion. It’s almost like that once you have experienced the ‘shared experience’ you can’t go back to just doing it all alone regardless of how they deny the fact.

I am really curious to know if WoW’s online numbers were effected by the games release. To see if all those people who are complaining in the forums about the end game stopped playing WoW for Oblivion. I also wonder how long Oblivion would satisfy those people before they came back to WoW? How many people find Oblivion too lonely the way I did with Marrowind?

All the above used to be a lot longer and way more detailed. I went into the other types of games I played, talking about what type of commitment some games require, comparing game experiences, etc. But when I read it all back to myself I could see that it would need a good deal of editing and cleaning up to read worth a damn. And I didn’t feel like doing that so I just cut it down.

Oh, I also dyed my hair blonde this weekend. It took two treatments and my the coloring to do it and my scalp feels like it has been sunburned. So far everybody that has seen it thinks it should be a bit warmer, more gold. There has been some mention that I look a bit like Lucius Malfoy, Draco’s Dad in the Harry Potter movies. I think that’s just because the ‘treatment’ straightened out my hair quite a bit and it will take a few days before my natural curls comes back. I’ll take and post pictures then.

Visa its like DKP!

Mazezine has a “News from the Future” (as in it doesn’t exist) posting about credit card companies offering virtual in-game rewards for purchases.

It's not a matter of if, just when - credit card companies, Pay Pal, Amazon, eBay and the individual "gaming" companies eventually bridge the real and virtual currencies with loyalty programs and private label credit cards - there's too much money out there to -not- to do this. This "demographic" is the battleground. The more you spend, the more you earn, sorta. Virtual $ isn't a crappy electronics doo-dad, it's just a number in a computer. Maybe you'll get some discounted airline tickets when you hit level 60 too, you deserve it! Earn your way to a new graphics card, why not.

Hell, I’d just like the credit card with the game art on it to show off what a complete gaming nerd I am. Reward points as well? Bonus!

SoE and SWG

SoE and Lucas Arts have come out to say that the rumor of Lucas Arts pulling the Star Wars Galaxies licesne from Sony Online Entertainment are false.

The part about Raph Koster leaving SoE is true.

Pimp My Bicycle

Over at Instructables I found the SpokePOV: LED Bike Wheel Images project.

How cool is that?

Kevin Smith's Superman

Kevin Smith (Clerk’s, Mall Rats, Jay & Silent Bob & Chasing Amy) at a convention is asked by a fan to tell the story behind the Superman movie script he wrote back in the mid-90’s. This is a awsome.

Scrambled Hax

My friend Bill posted this link at work today. It’s a video sample from a guy who has written a program called Scrambled Hax. It is a music video audio sampler for DJs. I see it as an Audio mosaic program. You know those Photomosaic where they take a huge data base of pictures and then the program makes one of the pictures out of tiny little versions of the other pictures? It’s the same thing only with music videos. The application he built is meant for live performances with DJs using it on the fly complete with snips of the music video that the source was cut from. So he can beat box into the microphone and have the program convert it on the fly and play the result. If you’ve clicked the link you know what I’m talking about.

Several people responded to the thread that it was like audio masturbation and the whole topic went off into left field about what is or isn’t music. It sounded very much like the “what is art” argument and got just about as far. Disparaging comments about M.C. Hammer were in abundance.

Personally I didn’t like any of the “music” that what created the video clip but then again I'm not really into the whole "live DJ mix" thing. I was really just looking at the program which I thought was pretty damn cool. I can see some really good stuff being made out of this in the hands of some creative and talented people. It would also be really cool if they built it into those home karaoke machines.

Updates

I just added the new title picture to replace the standard text and added a link to the Video Game Voter's Network at the bottom of the sidebar.

I have a version of the title picture where the sub-title is written in a graffiti-like sprawl. I spend a lot of time on it interchanging letters from two different graffiti-like fonts, using upper and lower case and slightly increasing or decreasing the size so it looked really random. In the end it looked too random and had a hand-drawn quality to it that I didn’t like even though I thought that was what I was going for.

I’ll screw around with more art type changes in the near future.

I also tried to get perma-links displayed for each posting but some things are just not meant to be understood in the nebulous morning hours.

This Just In

Kotaku has a rumor up that Raph Koster has left Sony Online Entertainment to start his own game studio and that Lucan Arts will not be extending the Star Wars Galaxies contract with SOE.

IGN, reporting on that story, is implying that SWG will go instead to Bioware who will be relaunching it. They note that Bioware has recently opened an Austin Texas office but have not announced what it will be working on.

My two cents… I like Raph. I like his ideas; he is a great top level designer. He just needs somebody else to make sure there is more meat in his sandwich and somebody to make sure the people making the sandwich know what they are doing and aren’t making a mess.

Star Wars Galaxies had some great sandbox concepts but not enough tool and toys to play with. Sandboxes are a lot of fun when you have a bucket, shovel, some action figures, matchbox cars and other stuff. Without any of that you are just sitting in the dirt.

SWG also suffered from exactly the same type of mess that Ultima Online faced. For example at one point they announced in SWG that they were going to be placing new restrictions on players in an effort to reduce the number of objects in the world because they didn’t realize how much players would turn into pack rats. They claimed their item database was overloaded. This was the exact same thing they did over and over in Ultima Online which suffered from all the same problems. Why didn’t anybody learn?

Anyway Kotaku’s mole at SoE also suggests that the days are numbered for John Smedley, SoE’s president. I’ve spoken or was spoken at by Smedley a good number of times in my 8 months at SoE and I liked him too. I always was of the opinion that if Smedley was involved more in the day to day workings of what was going on at SoE things would be a lot better. He appears to know what he is talking about and when it takes the time to seriously look into what is going on in a project, he expertly nails what the problems are that need to be addressed.

The same thing happened at Westwood though, the more our two founders got involved with running the company the less time they had for what was going on in the company. You can’t have somebody show up for a meeting every three weeks, throw out a bunch of mandates and vanishes again leaving chaos and confusion in their wake. The games that were the result of these things suffered for it greatly and lead to the closing of the studio.

Gaming Skill Finally Paying Off!

Wired has news post: You Play World of Warcraft? You’re Hired! Though once again I have to point out how I was here first.

You’ll notice the following on my own resume:

Related Interest
In depth involvement with current on-line persistent state role playing games. Current member of Afterlife, formerly one of the top guilds in EverQuest and now an active raiding guild in World of Warcraft. Former member of Knights of Glory and Beer [KGB], a large guild in Ultima Online.

I wonder if I should add "created the Thottbot logo"?

Speaking of being a Guild Leader, The Daedalus Project has a posting entitled Life as a Guild Leader, which is a write up using the results of a survy taken of Guild Leaders in MMO games. Some noteable quotes:

When you are the leader of a guild of 50 players, gaming can become more stressful than your daytime job.

God damn, people don't listen. I hated it. They are so whiny and expect you to do exactly what they say and give them what they want. Balancing the needs of 50 people suck... I won't do it again. I don't even want to be an officer. Takes all the fun out of the game.

A guild leader has to be den mother and bitch goddess in one.

The most valuable lesson I learned from being a guild leader is that if you give someone an inch they will take a mile. The experience drove me much farther to the political right.

Then and Now

Fosfor Gadgets has a few pictures of video games of today compared to similar games of the 80’s. My long time readers (which I believe is a grand total of nobody) will remember I posted a picture of Adventure on the Atari 2600 (the very first graphic adventure game) versus one from World of Warcraft myself back in June of 2005. One of these days i'll put the code in for perma-links, in the mean time you'll have to click on that link and then scroll down to the Saturday, June 11th post title "Trip Down Memory Game."

The only thing I don’t like about Fosfor's pictures are that the modern ones don’t show any of the interfaces or are actually marketing shots. Yeah they show how cool the graphics of today are but it rings of the before and after shots you see of people in magazines who have had some procedure done. You know where the “after” picture has the person smiling with professionally applied make-up, hair styling, and lighting.

Latest Links

Here are the latest links going around so you too can know what the hell everybody is laughing about and be in on all the inside jokes:

Onyxia 50 DKP minus (NSFW)

Ragnaros (NSFW)

Razorgor (NSFW)

Onyxia 50 DKP minus sound clips for you own raid

MC Raiders Song

Macgyver Saves the Server

*NSFW = Not Safe For Work

Xenophobia

We have met the enemy and he is us.
-Walt Kelly

It is so funny listening to World of Warcraft players from the Horde or Alliance faction talking about WoW players of the opposing faction as if they are some completely different, culturally alien race of beings.

Now I will give you the fact that the Horde side probably has slightly more of the young adolescent, more aggresive type players. The reason for that is the Horde’s fiction and their playable races fit in more with the type of play experience they are looking for. The Horde faction are getting the Blood Elf race in the Burning Crusade expansion to hopefully bridge some of that distance and acquire players who have a stronger tie to the more attractive races in these types of games.

Back to the point, besides that very slight demographic discrepancy… players of the other faction are just other players. Other players just like them! There is no master brain controlling them. They don’t get together to vote on some agenda. They don’t have a developmental historical or cultural anomaly inherent to them that is any different from players of the other faction. There is no real difference between either set of players!

Yet you constantly hear people saying stuff about “the insert faction does this. The insert faction can’t handle this. The insert faction always exploit that.”

I like the way players from both factions justify their bad behavior; doing exactly the same thing they are accusing the other faction of doing, as being okay because it’s paying them back for doing it first.

My personal specific favorite is the way both sides accuse the other of using some ‘auto flag pick-up exploit program/mod” in the War Song Gulch battleground. Like if there was such a program, which there isn’t, it would be keyed to only be downloadable to people who can prove they play on that faction’s side.

There has got to be behavioral scientists that could get some wonderful insights into human behavior by studying this. Xenophobia created by two pretty much identical groups of players, hidden behind the anonymity of their characters, who cannot communicate directly with each other inside of the game. Oh there has got to be a wealth of information that can be learned from this. I am sure if we could nail this down we could bring about peace in the Middle East.

Peanut Butter and Jelly

Sandwiches are not made, they are created. Each type of sandwich is special piece of art in and of itself. Each has its own special qualities and a set of unique skills required to bring it to life. We will start with the Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich, easy to make, impossible to master, delicious for lunch.

You will need the following:

Peanut Butter of the old fashion variety, this is the type that needs to be stirred because the oil all rises to the top. It is smooth, not chunky, and room temperature. If it was in the refrigerator you’ll need to set it out for awhile before you start. A fresh, previously unopened jar of peanut butter is the best, but you can’t be expected to throw out the jar after every sandwich.

Grape Jelly because there is no other flavor. Jelly not jam. The jelly should be chilled, straight from the refrigerator. Unlike peanut butter, jelly is best after the jar is 2/3rds gone. This is because the sound the utensil makes on the glass jar has better tone when there is less jelly.

Fresh white bread; speak to me not of wheat or other so-called ‘healthy’ bread.

Utensils: Butter knife, bread knife and a tea spoon.

Start by taking four slices of bread from the package, skipping the top nose piece and two slices. Yes, four pieces. You are making two sandwiches, you can’t eat just one. You might think you just want one, but after you eat the first and don’t have a second one you’ll be sorry. Trust me, two sandwiches. Take the first two pieces and lay them out on a paper towel so that the sides of the bread slices that were together are now both face up. Do the same with the second two pieces. This is so when you put them back together they will fit properly.

Slice a swath of peanut butter out with the bread knife and evenly spread it onto one slice of each of the two sets of bread. The key word here is “evenly” and make sure it goes all the way to the edge but not over. Neatness counts. You way want to hold the bread in the palm of your hand as you swirl the peanut butter around the bread. Don’t be rough and don’t tear or bruise the bread spreading too hard.

Use the spoon to stir the jelly. You just want to loosen it up a bit, break up the big jelly chunks so you can spread it out onto the bread. A few rotations of the spoon are more than fine. Use the spoon to scoop the jelly out onto the remaining two slices of bread. Spread it out with the bottom of the spoon, again evenly and all the way to edge watching the mess. Keep that peanut butter contaminated butter knife away. Take your time here, this part may sound simple but jelly can be deceptively difficult to spread evenly. If you have a big solid jelly chunk that you are having trouble spreading, use the edge of the spoon to ‘cut’ it. Go slow, no need to rush.

Now this part might seem esoteric but you will just have to trust me here. Forge the masterpieces together by taking the peanut butter bread and putting them on top of their corresponding jelly pieces, and then turn them up side down so the jelly is on top. Now finally cut the sandwiches in half diagonally with the bread knife. Think you are getting good at this? Try doing it in one clean stroke without tearing the paper towel underneath. If you need a crutch, you can cut them on a chopping block. I won’t even mention anything about cutting the crust off, grow up. Everybody knows the crust is what keeps the taste from leaking out.

Put a fresh paper towel or napkin onto a clean sandwich plate and arrange the sandwiches on top. Add some chips, I recommend Fritos. Quickly clean up and then get a tall cold class of a good beverage. Enjoy.

10/02/09 - IMPORTANT UPDATE LINK!!!

The Long and Short of It

I’ve been growing my hair back out. I’m smack dead in that ‘looks like shit’ phase at the moment. At this point it usually only looks good right when I get out of the shower and its doing the wet curly thing. I had been just letting it grow and wearing a hat to hide it. I’m not really a hat person but my dress style has become more relaxed since I moved to Australia so I've gotten away with it. It got to the point that it was just a total mess and I had an emergency haircut to clean it up right before flying to SOE back in December. I am getting it cut regularly now, just trimming the ends and trying to keep it neat kind of thing. I am getting some highlights put back in at my next appointment. I only have to wear the hat on the really bad hair days now.

I bring this up because yesterday I actually had a good hair day. I had even been wearing headphones during the day, ones that touch the top of my head no mater how they are adjusted, and even that didn’t mess up my hair. It still has a good while to go before it gets to the length I want which isn’t going to be as long as I had it before. I am just going to grow it to just a tad below the shoulders; before it was almost to my waste. I’m also wearing it straight back now instead of sweeping it to the side and you can see how much it is thinning on top :-( Damn you androgen-receptor genes!

I wanted to post a picture of what it was like before and where I am at now so you could see how it compares to the picture over on the right, but I can’t find the big version of the picture I’ve been using for my forum icon. I have some zipped files I saved off when I reformatted the other machine and I’ll look through those.

Just a quick funny bit

A slightly funny World of Warcraft: The Text Adventure Wired News post.

Snippet:

Welcome to World of Warcraft: The Text Adventure.

You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully. There is an elf with an exclamation point above her head here.

>Talk elf

"Alas," she says. "There is a great darkness upon the land. Fifty years ago the Dwarf Lord Al'ham'bra came upon the Dragon Locket in the Miremuck Caverns. He immediately recognized the ..."

> Click Accept

"Hey," the elf protests. "This is important expository. Azeroth is a rich and storied land, with a tapestry of interwoven ..."

> Click Accept

"OK, fine. Bring me six kobold tails."

...

Out with the old even if I'm not done with it yet

Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a walkman-sized cassette player now days? It might be different back in the States, but here in Australia I’ve tried everything from high end electronic stores to Kmart and can’t find one. I have found a few boom box CD players that are also cassette players but cost just under $100.

The reason that I am looking for one is because even though I sold off / gave away most of my unabridged audio books when I left the States, I still have a good number of my favorite ones including the entire unabridged Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy & Dirk Gently books read by their author the late Douglas Adams. I don’t think you can even get those on CD. The cassettes are over 10 years old now and starting to show wear. I want to preserve them by turning them into MP3 files. A got some software from our sound guy at work and he even gave me his old duel cassette dubbing machine but it isn’t in great shape and I'm not happy with the output quality.

I have been listening to Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson while working this weekend. I don’t think I’ve listened to it since I bought it way back when. If you are familiar with his later works such as the Baroque Cycle you know he is a very very very intelligent guy. And knowing that I am amazed at the number of things he got wrong imagining a cyber-space type meta-verse. I’ll note that he does mention / apologize for some of these things in an appendix that might be at the end of the audio version or may be in the book itself, I can’t remember. I did actually read the book before it came out on audio.

For example he mentions that people wouldn’t like / accept avatars just appearing in the virtual world. That it would break the illusion and ruin the experience. You can’t just teleport from place to place for the same reason. If you play in any online games you know that people pop in and out all the time any nobody seems to notice or care. There are bunch of other examples like how things would be rendered and how the places in his meta-verse take up geographical space, like I said he talks about some of them in the appendix.

I have his next book, Diamond Age unabridged on cassette as well. His third book, The Cryptonomicon came out on cassette in an “unabridged excerpts” version from a different publisher than the first two. Unabridged excerpts… umm wouldn’t that make it Abridged? Sorry guys, I don’t buy abridged audio books. I thought about writing Mr. Stephenson a letter about it. I did write a letter to Douglas Adams once complaining about the first Dirk Gently book not being out in unabridged format and his personal assistant wrote me back and told me that it would be as soon as the rights from the previous publisher of the abridged version expired.

I’m rambling. I’ve creatively exhausted from doing all these damn icons all day and I’ll have to go in again tomorrow and finish them up. I think I’m going to take a day off next week to make up for having to work 12 hours days over the weekend. It’s not that object to having to work long hours to do the important stuff. I’m familiar with crunching to get the product out, but this isn’t something that should have been dumped in my lap a week before it had to be done for GDC. It is way too demanding on the creative process to try to come up with all these icons in this short amount of time. There was no time to even organize all the abilities to try to define all the themes. For example define what a stun effect looks like as part of the icon. I’m having to try my best to do that on the fly. I just have to remember that I already did an “area-effect knock back field effect” for one school so I can try to make the area-effect knock back effect for this other school look similar. The desired result being that the player will be familiar with the theme of the icon art so he will have some idea what the ability does without having to look it up. “Oh that swirl symbol means a sleep or stun effect” or “the red-cross symbol means it’s a heal or health related effect.”

Speaking of the red-cross symbol being used for healing / health in video games the Candian Red Cross has called the video game industry’s use of the red colored plus symbol in games as an “unauthorized and indeed illegal use of the Red Cross emblem.”

Anyway, I'm going to bed.

There is never time to do it right, but there is always time to do it over

We are in pre-GDC hell at work. I am trying to redo all the icons, yes that’s right I’m doing icons again! AGAIN! I am having trouble sleeping at night worrying about all the icons I still have to have done by Sunday night PLUS all the other stuff that I will have to redo after GCD. For example we are re-skinning the GUI. But after GDC it will all have to be redrawn for a 1600x1200 screen resolution. It will also have to be done in separate pieces so that it can be scaled independently of the screen resolution. Why aren’t we just doing it that way now? No time.

I found out I won’t be going to GCD if I hadn’t mentioned that since last talking about it.

Just to relax tonight I started playing around with Google Earth while watching TV. I had messed around with it before but just looking for places I used to live, my house in Vegas, that sort of thing. Still can’t zoom in close enough to San Vito dei Normanni, Italy to see the area in any detail, but you can see our apartment and Auran here in Australia really clearly.

Today I also went looking at the Eiffel Tower, Mount Rushmore, Mount Saint Helens, Great Wall of China, etc. The 3D building technology they are putting is pretty cool too. Spinning around Manhattan Island with all the buildings on is like something you would have seen on TV or the movies just a few years ago and rolled your eyes at. I was disappointed to see they have a square building for the Luxor in Vegas. Guess they can’t do pyramids.

I couldn’t find Uluru here in Australia either. I searched around Alice Springs for a while, tried to find a map on the web but gave up.

Half-life 2 Comic

Found this absolutely hilarious Half-life 2 comic, Concerned: the half-life and death of gordon frohman. Granted it probably looses something if you haven’t played Half-life 2, but they do have notes at the bottom that you can turn on to read about each comic and how he made it.

My Old Resume Site

While writing the previous post I did some searching to see if I had any pictures of Dune 2 still saved in some dark, dusty folder on the site and I found part of my old resume demo site that I put up in 2002-2003.

It is missing the top and sidebars that went with it and the Earth and Beyond link is blank for reasons I don’t care enough about to look into, but it has a number of pictures from some of my much earlier games.

Oh and if you’re asking yourself what’s this about Earth and Beyond Mr. “massively-now canceled-loads of crap that flopped under the weight of all their poorly thought out, over intellectualized, stupidity”?

The answer is “Electronic Arts.” The E&B that hit the shelves was nothing like the E&B we started out designing. My contribution to the design was working on “planet mode” which was cut about a year and a half before the game shipped. The only thing that was left in that game that I had anything to do with is the window’s icon. So there you go Mr. “If you had read my history link over on the left you would have known that already”!

Yet Another Soapbox

For the last week or so I have had to force myself not to write about a Gamasutra soapbox article about World of Warcraft. It is just another piece of mindless drivel written by somebody in the industry with one whole game credit (at least that I could find in my whole 30 seconds of looking) who seems to have just wanted the attention for his blog or something. He just comes across as completely clueless idiot with thing likes slamming the terms of service because he thinks they can just code around all anti-social and exploitive behavior players can come up with. He really should get back to his day job of herding cats.

Anyway, I’m breaking my silence because Gamasutra has posted a soapbox response article which prints some response letters from game professionals and other respondents. Personally I don’t think any of them give him the smacking around he really deserves, but what do I know?

The thing that gets me about these types of spouting off isn’t that this game may not just be his cup of tea, but rather the tendency for people to point at the latest, greatest, best-selling, immensely popular game and say how they have got it all wrong. These are the same yahoos who are responsible for all the other massively-now canceled-loads of crap that flopped under the weight of all their poorly thought out, over intellectualized, stupidity.

And if you think I’m reacting as a fan boy remember that I worked at the late Westwood Studios and was part of the team that invented the Real-Time Strategy genre with the creation of the game Dune 2.

Play Westwood's Dune 2 and then play Blizzard's Warcraft, notice anything similar? Easier question would be, “notice anything different?” (Correct answer is: “the trees” and that’s about all)

Next play Blizzard’s Warcraft 2’s pre-release press demo, then Westwood’s Command & Conquer, and then the actual released version of Warcarft 2. Did you see that brilliant interface change? The one that wasn’t in Warcraft 2’s press demo, but was in Command & Conquer which shipped about a week or two later and then somehow wound up in Warcraft 2 when it hit the shelves?

Quickly for those of you who didn’t just rush out and play all those games; Dune 2 and the first Warcraft had you selected a unit, then pressed a button like “move” or “attack” and then clicked where you wanted him to go or what unit you wanted it to attack. While working on the mouse cursor art for Command & Conquer it occurred to me that the game should be smart enough to know that after selecting on a unit if you clicked on regular terrain you probably wanted that unit to go there as opposed to clicking on an enemy unit which you probably wanted to attack. Blizzard saw that inovation and reworked it into Warcraft 2!

Whew! I have wanted to rant about that for a long time. I feel so much better, so light... so free...

But seriously, I hold no hard feelings. It was a brilliant "well duh" idea and they would have been stupid for not using it. Blizzard is very good at taking an existing game type or what have you and polishing it up very very very well. In my opinion sometimes improvement can be just as good as innovation when it comes to progress. It keeps things moving forward which is always a good thing… the bastards.

Absolute Fabrication

The following peice of made up crap is reported to be an 'inside source' into the up coming Hero Classes in the World of Warcraft expansion.

-----------------------------------
Sources inside Blizz have revealed their plans for hero classes. Blizzard does plan to release hero classes with the expansion, but they haven’t explicitly stated it because they want to announce it close to the release date, insuring a huge amount of hype. I haven’t been told much more than the basics, but I’ll try to explain the system as best as I can:

At any given level there is a certain amount of content; at level 60, the amount of content is very disproportionate with the available content for other levels. The reason is obvious: it is the current endgame, and players need something to enjoy. However, with the level cap raised players would be able to blow through and skip a lot of the content that has been developed over the past year, and allowing players to do so would be a poor use of the developers’ time. This is where hero classes come in.

You will be stuck at level 60, just like you are now, even when the expansion comes out. An epic quest (of REALLY epic proportions) for each hero class will be made available to level 60 players. The only way to break the level 60 barrier will be to go on one of these quests to become a hero class. The quest will require the player to do a lot of solo content as well as a variety of group and raid content. Upon completion of the quest, the player will become a level 61 hero class . They can then once again begin their normal level progression. A hero class is not innately more powerful than a normal class (but the level differentiation makes them more powerful of course). Hero classes will be available to everyone and although the hardcore players will naturally get their hero classes first, it is designed so that players of all play styles will be able to become a hero class in a reasonable amount of time. Blizzard’s implementation of hero classes will accomplish a lot of things. It will create a natural barrier at level 60 that will insure that the average player will experience more of the content Blizz has developed, it gives players a way of further differentiating themselves, and it adds a huge amount of new dynamics between different classes.

Each race/class combination will have 2 hero classes available to them (with several overlapping). This presents a monumental balance job (there are about 50 hero classes), which is probably another reason why Blizzard is delaying the information release. Choosing your hero class will be irreversible, much like the tradeskill masteries. Some hero classes are an extension of the “father” class, some have tweaked mechanics, while others are radically different. The easiest example I can think of is a Night Elf priest, for which the 2 hero classes are a Priest(ess) of the Moon (a continuation of the priest’s current form) and Demon Hunter (an agility-based combat hero with a variety of discipline-esque abilities). So without further ado, here is a brief overview of some of the hero classes:

DRUIDS
---Night Elf Druid:
Arch Druid: This will be a hybrid class in the same vein as its “father” class, and Storm Crow form may make a reappearance.

Keeper of the Grove: The druid will sacrifice some of his shapeshifting abilities in exchange for improved healing and casting, and will even be able to command treants on occasion.

---Tauren Druid:
Arch Druid: see above

Elder: This is essentially a druid that has lost some shapeshifting abilities and gained some beast-like abilities similar to the hunter. The casting and healing abilities are also amped up, but not nearly as much as the Keeper of the Grove. The Elder also has a bit of the Diablo II druid mixed in for good measure.

HUNTERS
---Night Elf Hunter:
Ranger: The Ranger is sort of a hunter/rogue mix. The Ranger will use the energy bar, will have a few stealthy abilities (but not of the same caliber as the rogue), and will no longer have a pet.

Beastmaster: The Beastmaster focuses more on the beast aspect than the ranged aspect of the hunter. He gains new beast abilities, such as switching pets in battle, and is a bit meaner in melee combat in exchange for a lot of his ranged hitting power.

---Dwarf Hunter:
Mountaineer: The Mountaineer is similar to the ranger (no pet, energy bar), but without the stealth aspects. The Mountaineer is hardier in melee combat than the hunter and and also has more extensive tracking and detection abilities.

Beastmaster: see above

---Orc Hunter:
Outrider: The Outrider is very similar to the wolfrider from Warcraft III, focusing on swift maneuvers and incapacitating enemies. He uses the energy bar.

Beastmaster: see above

---Tauren Hunter:
Tracker: The Tracker uses the energy bar like the Mountaineer, but still retains the hunter pet, and as a result is not as tough as the Mountaineer.

Beastmaster: see above

---Troll Hunter:
Shadowhunter: This is essentially a hunter that drops some of it’s beast and survival abilities for some shadow spells (think Hex). The Shadowhunter still uses mana.

---Headhunter: The Headhunter still has the ranged emphasis of the hunter, but it focuses on throwing weapons (a massive revamp for throwing weapons is planned). The Headhunter uses energy, has more combat abilities, and drops the pet.

MAGES
---Human Mage:
Archmage: The Archmage is an exact extension of the mage class, with arcane, fire, and frost spells. Apparently one of the abilities being toyed around with is Summon Water Elemental. The planned incarnation of the spell will be a long-cooldown summon that will not function like a normal pet, and will instead function more along the lines of the Mechanical Yeti (no player control).

Necromancer: The only similarity between the Necromancer and the mage is the emphasis on magical damage. The necromancer uses shadow damage and has a major focus on pets, similar to the warlock. However, unlike other pet classes, the majority of the Necromancer’s damage will come from the pet instead of the Necromancer. I do not know if the Necromancer will be able to have multiple pets out at once.

---Gnome Mage:
Archmage: see above

Arcanist: The Arcanist is similar to the mage, with a focus on arcane magic. The Arcanist does slightly less damage than the Archmage, but gains added utility and new support spells.

---Undead Mage:
Archmage: see above

Necromancer: see above

---Troll Mage:
Hydromancer: The Hydromancer is similar to the Arcanist, but with a focus on the frost tree. The Hydromancer may also receive the Summon Water Elemental spell. In addition to added utility and support spells, the Hydromancer will also get some limited healing abilities.

Shadowcaster: The Shadowcaster is essentially a mage that uses shadow magic instead of fire and frost.

PALADINS
---Human Paladin:
Templar: The Templar is the holy warrior that so many paladins wanted their class to be. The Templar has limited healing, but receives a slew of new combat abilities, making the Templar much better at tanking and melee damage than the paladin.

Cleric: The Cleric is the other side of the paladin spectrum. Instead gaining new combat abilities, the Cleric gains improved healing, more utility and support, and some holy damage spells.

---Dwarf Paladin:
Templar: see above

Cleric: see above

PRIESTS
---Human Priest:
High Priest: The High Priest is essentially a priest that drops the shadow tree, but gains new damage spells from holy and discipline. The High Priest will be the most powerful healer in the game.

Spellbreaker: The Spellbreaker wears mail, has several combat abilities and diminished healing, and has several anti-caster abilities.

---Dwarf Priest:
Thane: The Thane is basically a priest in mail, with a slight hit to healing abilities but a few new combat abilities.

Runelord:
The Runelord is similar to the High Priest, although not as healing heavy.

---Night Elf Priest:
Priest of the Moon: The Priest of the Moon is similar to the High Priest as well, but has some extra damage and utility spells coming from arcane and nature magics.

Demon Hunter: The Demon Hunter is radically different in playstyle from the priest. The Demon Hunter is a mana-using melee damage hero class. The Demon Hunter has a mix of discipline spells and combat abilities with some shadow spells mixed in.

---Undead Priest:
High Priest: see above

Shadow Priest: The name is pretty self-explanatory. The Shadow Priest does not have all the healing abilities of the High Priest, but makes several gains in the damage, utility, and crowd control departments.

---Troll Priest:
Shadow Priest: see above

?:

ROGUES
---Gnome Rogue:
Assassin: The Assassin is an extension of the rogue with damage, stealth, poisons, and martial arts.

Scout: The Scout has slightly less damage than the Assassin, but is tougher in combat, and has the ability to use traps among other new utilities.

---Human Rogue:
Assassin: see above

Scout: see above

---Dwarf Rogue:
Assassin: see above

Pitfighter: The Pitfighter is a rogue without stealth, but with improved combat and defensive abilities.

---Night Elf Rogue:
Assassin: see above

Scout: see above

---Orc Rogue:
Assassin: see above

Pitfighter: see above

---Undead Rogue:
Assassin: see above

Scout: see above

Troll Rogue:
Assassin: see above

Scout: see above

SHAMANS
---Orc Shaman:
Farseer: The Farseer has more emphasis on healing and casting than the shaman, and as a result has less combat ability. The Farseer doesn’t use totems but gains it utility from other abilities. Feral Spirit might make an appearance using a system similar to the Water Elemental.

Spirit Walker: The Spirit Walker is a more direct extension of the shaman than the Farseer, maintaining a rough balance of combat, casting, and healing ability.

---Tauren Shaman:
Farseer: see above

Spirit Walker: see above

---Troll Shaman:
Witch Doctor: The Witch Doctor is similar to the Farseer, but has a heavy emphasis on totems. In addition to the elemental magics the Witch Doctor also uses some shadow magic.

Spirit Walker: see above

WARLOCKS
---Human Warlock:
Master Warlock: The Master Warlock is an extension of the warlock class, keeping the pet and the vast majority of the warlock mechanics.

Shadowguard: The Shadowguard has more melee emphasis than the warlock, and loses the demonic pet. The Shadowguard on his own is weaker than other melee classes, but is aided by demonic-type abilities (such as burning blood and fiery breath) to power himself up.

---Gnome Warlock:
Master Warlock: see above

Shadowguard: see above

---Orc Warlock:
Master Warlock: see above

Shadowguard: see above

---Undead Warlock:
Master Warlock: see above

Shadowguard: see above

WARRIORS
Blizz hasn’t fleshed out warrior hero classes as much as the others, so I wasn’t able to get much on them. However, it has been confirmed that Orc warriors do have the option to become a Blademaster!

Question marks (?) denote a hero class that hasn’t been decided on by the developers yet. I don’t know the Blood Elf hero classes. I don’t know the new Alliance race (although I hear they’re going to reveal it soon). I have no idea how talent/abilities are going to work, I don’t know what will happen to armor requirements and class specific sets, etc. Everything I know I’ve posted here, and it is subject to change as it is still in fairly early development stages.
-----------------------------------

I believe this is fabrication for two big reasons:

1. It implies that after level 60 you aren’t the same class anymore. "You liked being a Hunter? Well too bad because now you’re a Ranger or a Beast Master. Please drive through." Nobody would be happy with this.

2. Making the hero classes race dependent means they would piss off everybody even more than reason 1. "You wanted to be the best healer in the game? Too bad you picked the wrong race way back when we hadn’t told you about the hero race-class combinations."

There are also a number of smaller points that lead me to believe he made this up.

He mentions wasted content at level 60. Where does he think people will go to earn the experience needed to get from 60 onward? There will be a host of new content with the expansion, but not enough to feed the entire player base. Sure it will make existing content easier but once they raise the level cap you will just see more 5-man groups running through the instances doing the related quests instead of 10 man raids just there for boss loot.

Notice the way every race and class has a detailed new hero class at the beginning of his post which quickly pitters out into “see above” as he runs out off steam and finally nothing for warriors when he is completely spent.

Honestly though, I don't understand what drives people to make up crap and post it on the forums. What kind of pathetic little ego must you have to so need to be the center of attention, the ‘inside guy’, that you would be driven to make up such a poorly thought out load of dribble?

What do I think is going to be in the expansion? Player housing is my number on prediction. What proof do I have? Just a little and the knowledge that it would go a long way to feed the social gamers that are complaining about too much high end raid content. Anybody want to put money against me?

Dr. Tran!

I am fairly confident that you will soon be hearing people quoting Dr. Tran in all your favorite online habitats in the Leroy Jenkings, Chuck Norris, “Go Go Good Team!”, “All your base are belong to us” fad type manner.



So this just leaves me with two questions. Who would win in a fight between Chuck Norris and Dr. Tran? And what was the name of the level 1 troll some guild brought with them on a Trakanon raid in Everquest? I was trying to remember because it was a fad for awhile to yell "do it for so-and-so!" on raids.

Valentines Day

When I was born and my mother suggested naming me after my father, he said no. He said there had already been enough Joseph Benjamin Hewitt’s. So my mother suggested naming me Valentino since I was born on Valentines Day. My father’s response was something along the lines of “You’re not bringing any kid into my house named Valentino.” So Joseph Benjamin Hewitt IV it was.

At first it might seem kind of cool to be born on Valentines Day. You get to be all suave with women, “Hey baby, I was born on Valentines Day” as if that implies something special. But what it really means is that you can’t really ever expect to have a birthday party for yourself. Well at least for a guy anyway. The logic works like this: if you have a significant other you have to take her out to dinner, buy her flowers and such. If you don’t have a significant other you can just forget about any of your friends being able to do something for your birthday because they are all out with their significant others.

There were a few times when I didn’t have a significant other on my birthday when my mother took me out for a birthday dinner, and let me just tell you that being in a restaurant, on Valentines Day, with your mother… I was never sure if people were feeling sorry for having Valentines Day dinner with my mother or thought I was some sort of Gigolo. I’m not actually sure which I would prefer either, I’d rather just not think about it.

Most of times if I do something for my birthday, it’s usually the on weekend before or after. This time however we did have a few people over for dinner. It was pretty cool.

We Go Again

Second post in one night, amazing you say. Well I’ll be honest; the World of Warcraft servers have gone down for weekly maintenance. But I wanted to do a separate post regarding just what I am doing here on this blog. It was meant to be something that would force me to write a bit more, but as I put it up I almost instantly tried to make it into a copy of the blogs of other game designers. But I’ve never really been able to pull that off. It wasn’t for lack of things to write about. I have game ideas I would like to talk about but I don’t want to just give them away. I have some stuff I would like to vent about but most of these vents have some tie to work and I don’t really want to drag work into these things because that’s just not right for a number of reasons. So what I am left with is just random comments about semi-industry related things that catch my eye. There is nothing really wrong with that; it just isn’t the same thing.

So I am going to officially let myself off the hook. I am just going to write about whatever I damn well feel like.

So you are probably going to see a lot of post about WoW. It’s the game that I am currently playing the most.

I am very frustrated that I can’t raid with my guild because of the big time zone difference in Australia. I leveled up a Priest to 60 because I figured it would be easier to get groups which it is, but there is so much more pressure on a Priest. If I screw up as a Rogue I die, if I screw up as the Priest another character dies. I’ve never liked playing the healer character for that very reason, but I never really gave it a serious go before. Dymion (the Priest) is now much better equipped than Sentris (the Rogue) I got to go on a real raid with the guild a few weeks ago, 3 of the outdoor dragons, Onyxia, and a full Molten Core run. I got 4 epic items if you include the quest piece that eventually led to me getting Benediction, an epic Priest staff. I hated it because I was woefully unprepared and just not up to speed with the game mechanics and dynamics as I was with Everquest. I also loved it because I was getting to raid again. Being part of that well oiled Afterlife machine where any failure is meet with our motto: “We go again.”

I have also been doing a lot of the PvP battlegrounds trying to rank up as another way to get good gear. I have never really been that into PvP, and as an under equipped Priest I tended to get killed rather fast as soon as I attracted the attention of the enemy. But I am starting to get the hang of it and now I got some better gear so it isn’t so bad anymore.

Well I have to go back to trying to teach Ventrillo to say Dymion correctly. It is pronounced “Dim-ee-un” not “Dime-ion”. It’s basically Endymion without the “En”. It is more of a Dan Simmons reference rather than the Keats or Greek mythological reference. Though I guess it could be “En-dime-ion” for all I know, next time I see the moon goddess I'll ask her.

Two Years

So I’ve gotten a few people get on my case for not updating my blog. So I am trying to think of something to write about that I won’t wind up spending hours looking up reference material and such.

We are crunching pretty hard at work getting a solid, polished demo ready for the Game Developers Conference in San Jose. If you want to see what I’ve been working on for the last… oh my… TWO YEARS!... come to GDC next month. I might even be there myself!

I have been holding off redeeming some Amazon.com gift certificates I got for Christmas while waiting to see if I actually do go back to the States for GDC. I’ll be able to hit the book and video stores while I am there and can bring stuff back in my suitcase. Then I can spend the gift certificates on the harder to find items. Books and such are just too expensive here.

In case you didn’t know I did get back to the States over Christmas for work related stuff and managed to squeeze in a whole week in Vegas with family. I brought 2 half empty suitcases with me and wound up taking 3 full ones back filled with DVDs, what’s left of my Books on Tape/CD collection and 3 Logitech G15 Keyboards. I think the airline luggage guys stole my CD audio version of Neil Gaiman’s latest novel, Anansi Boys. I remember seeing it sitting in my open suitcase before leaving the States and I have no memory of unpacking it. I had my mother search her house to see if I left it there, but no luck.

So anyway TWO YEARS! I just realized that it has been exactly two years since I moved to Australia. Well Sunday was the actual two year anniversary. I feel I should have done more with that… been prepared with a special two year anniversary blog theme or something… maybe even a graphic. Oh well, maybe next year.

What's Going On?

Regarding this Blog lately it’s been either nothing I feel like writing about or its something I that would take some effort to write about and I’ve been too busy.  Yeah I know that is what everybody says but we’ve been gearing up for the Austin Game Conference which was the week before last. I didn’t to go, they gave me the excuse that somebody who knew what was going on had to stay in the office while they were away.  As soon as it was over me and the wife spent a week up at Brampton Island which was pretty nice.  I bought a new digital camera before we went so I might link some pictures. I also have some pictures of when we went to the Australian Zoo a few months ago (That’s Steve, the Croc-Hunter, Erwin’s zoo.)  Cricky Mate!

My other problem has been my big powerhouse computer. It’s been down forever and after doing a fresh Windows install, updating the BIOS and using every diagnostic, virus scanner and ad-aware remover program I could get my hands on I have finally given up and taken it in to work. I bought the computer from the guy who supplies computers for work and I’ve having our tech guy handle it all for me.   The scary thing is this computer has been giving me odd problems too. A couple of time on boot up I have gotten a warning message saying the hard drive is operating outside of normal parameters and that I should back up all my data and contact Dell immediately.

I am still catching up all the crap I missed while I was away.  I just found out Keith Parkinson passed away.  He was my favorite of all the old TSR (Dungeons & Dragons) artist.  I remember when we did DragonStrike I got to convert a few of his paintings into splash screens for the game.  Keith also did the box covers for Everquest before going on to become the art director for Sigil Games.  Rest in peace Keith.

Speaking of Dungeons & Dragons I saw a clip for the upcoming D&D Online game from Turbine.  Umm… what a load of crap.  Plastic models with the second worst voice over I’ve ever heard.  I work with a guy here who used to work for Turbine and I’ve heard some interesting stories about what has been going on there and I believe him. I believe him because not because I did a phone interview with Turbine and they passed on me. I believe him because they did an interview with a friend of mine who I think is one of the best technical game designers I know and they pass on him.  I remember they kept asking me about old Westwood stories instead of focusing on if could do the job I was interview for.  Anyway, I think D&D Online is going to flop bigger than Asheron’s Call 2 whose servers are being shut off next month.

As far as our game goes we got some very good response from the closed door showing at the Austin Game Conference.  I think we will be releasing a teaser trailer sometime soon.

You’ll notice I didn’t bother linking anything in this post.  That’s what Google is for, get off your lazy but and look stuff up yourself.  I really like pretending I actually have an audience that comes here and reads these ramblings.

Added a Few Links

I added a link to Lost Garden to my Game Industry Blog list over on the right. It’s a really good Blog with various essays on things video game related.  He posted an excellent piece on the new Nintendo Revolution controller last week and his site was nearly killed by being linked to by a good number of big time sites. It’s the kind of thing I would like to think I would write if I had real writing time.  He posted a follow up today that answers some of the questions people had after reading his post and I recommend you check it out.

I also added Escapist Magazine to my Game Industry News list.  I thought the first ‘issue’ I read was a bunch of mindless dribble, but I have since found a few good articles.  Damion Schubert of Zen of Design wrote a good article on Guild Designs which echoes a lot of what I’ve been spouting off at work myself. Unfortunately a lot of my next gen guild design stuff has already been cut, but that isn’t as bad as it sounds as the change in direction of our game makes a lot it less useful and unnecessary at the moment.

Auran News Article

Oh look we are in the news.

Minions

We have some University students in at work; they are doing some sort of work experience thing which basically means free slave labors for us.  I personally have two guys helping me with some stuff and I’ve taken to calling them “my minions.”  From what I gather most work experience people usually wind up being errand boys at what ever company they intern at.  But I’ve got these two poor bastards doing in game equipment icons for me. If the icons are good enough they will be used in the game and the two of them will even get art credit.

It was really nice that when I gave them the dog and pony show sales pitch that described the game they were actually very into it.  This is before actually seeing anything we have running; this was just after hearing me give a brief game play overview.  It has been awhile since I’ve been around when anybody new was introduced to the game and it was quite uplifting to see such a positive reaction to it. I’d tell you about it but it is still hush-hush secret.

Well, I am off to see if I can get this old copy of The Secret of Money Island running on my computer. I managed to get a hold of all four games and am planning on playing through trough. I never got to play 3 & 4 and that always bothered me.  Oh, in case you are wondering that this old computer not the new computer as I still haven’t fixed that one, I actually haven’t touched it in forever hoping maybe it will fix itself or something.

Nintendo Revolution Controller

The details about the Nintendo Revolution controller are out. You can read good hands on review over at 1Up.com. It only took 4 or 5 posts to our internal Clan Auran mailing list before the sexual innuendo jokes started flying about what kind of games would benefit from this type of controller.

Promotional video shown at Toyko Game Show of the Revolution Controller provide by Etoychest.org. They say they will have a streaming video cast of the TGS keynote here friday morning. Thats friday morning for you people in the real world as it is already friday night here in the future!

I do remember reading that Nintendo originally wanted to launch this type of controller back in the early 90’s but decided against it. I’ll have to look up the exact details on that when I get home. Anyway, I think it could be very very cool. I am looking forward to the Revolution more than the PS3 or XBox 360 because of it. Granted, I will probably wind up getting all 3 systems but I haven’t seen anything for the other two that makes them any different from what I would expect from the next new game system. Hell I haven’t even seen any release titles that have made me want to make sure I'll buy any of them day one.

Quite the opposite actually if you’ve read this, again over at 1UP.com, which talks about the difference between the ‘target render’ clip of what we were assured Madden NFL 2006 would look like compared to the actual game shots that have been released. Not that I am interested in sports games myself, but still that is quite a difference. I’ve faked up plenty of screenshots in my day for marketing but they were all made with the consideration that it had damn well better represent what the game will actually look at. Funny enough two of the screenshots on the C&C: Tiberian Sun box are fakes I did early on in development. They are easy to spot when you are looking for them because of the motion blur and lighting effects, but still pretty close. I was kind of annoyed they were used for box art though since by that time we had plenty of real shots they could have used.

Okay, How about a Grape XBox 360?

I remember my mother telling me stories about when she was a kid and different brand record players played at different speeds.  When she bought an album she had to make sure it was the correct speed for her record player.  I can assume you all know what records albums are right?

Anyway so on the subject of Microsoft’s multiple flavors of Window Vista I thought I would continue ranting about Microsoft’s multiple Xbox 360 flavors.  So assuming dear reader, you are my mother who doesn’t know anything about any of this; I’ll explain. The next version of the Xbox will come in two different versions.  The $400 dollar version is the whole kit and caboodle (Even I have no idea what a caboodle is though I remember looking it up once but have forgotten what I found).  The $300 dollar version is just the basic console; the two big things it is missing are the wireless controller and the 20GB hard drive.  The minor things you don’t get are the headset, Ethernet cable, and media remote.  You can buy all the missing pieces separately to eventually get everything the $400 dollar version has.  I do wonder if you need what ever is included with the remote to access the multi-media functions (play CD’s, DVDs, etc.) like you did with the original Xbox.

Now the wireless controller isn’t a real big deal. It’s just a controller. The hard drive on the other hand might be a big deal.

Lets me explain by first telling the story of the Sega Genesis 32X.  The 32X was an add-on for the Sega Genesis that was released in November of 1994 that would turn the Genesis from a 16bit system into a more powerful 32bit system.  One of its biggest problems was that by being an add-on and its owners were a sub-set of the sub-set of video game owning people.  At the time you had the Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, 3DO and the Atari Jaguar (in that order and not counting the Sega CD.)  As a game developer in 1994 you decide you are going to make a game for the Sega Genesis, but are you going to make a regular Genesis game or a 32X game? Y ou have to ask yourself how many Genesis users have the 32X add on?  Let’s assume you are certain that 60% of the Genesis users are going to buy your game.  But if only 40% of the people who own the Sega Genesis also have the 32X that means that your 60% gets squashed down to only 24% (40 percent of 60 percent… I think. Man, how embarrassing would it be to get that wrong? Well not so embarrassing that I am going to check. I just spent 30 minutes trying to find what percentage of the market the Genesis had in 1994 in The Ultimate History of Video Games. I know it’s in there but I can’t find it.)  Anyway unless you have some shot at getting a whole lot of free advertising from Sega for being a 32X game to make up for that huge loss of potential sales you are going to do a regular Genesis game.

Now back to the present and the Xbox 360 with its optional 20GB hard drive.  It isn’t quite as bad as the 32X situation because it’s a storage device not something that runs the game.  But it does mean that if there is some feature of the game that requires the hard drive it is going to be cut or changed to not require the hard drive because the developers know that not everybody is going to have one.  Nobody who isn’t doing a product directly backed by Microsoft is going to want to put a “Hard Drive Required” sticker on the front of their box and cut into their potential sales.

Again, I know Microsoft is in this to make money. I also know that all game hardware manufactures take a loss on the hardware in the hope to make up for it later with software sales. And on top of all that knowledge I also know that $400 is quite a bit above the magic price point for new game hardware.  So being that I am so full of it… I mean full of knowledge… what would I have done? Well if I worked at Microsoft and the decision was up to me, I would steam about the halls angry that they took the decision away from me when I told them to eat the cost of the hard drive on top of all the other costs they are eating. It is probably just too much of a loss on top of the rest.  

To be honest $100 bucks is a decent price for a hard drive and a wireless controller. The controllers alone cost around $30-50 bucks for ones with a rumble pack.

In the end I’ll just recommend this public service announcement from CTRL-ALT-DEL.

Windows Vista - Grape Flavor

I am sure you have all heard by now about the next version of Windows, “Windows Vista” coming in 7 different versions.  It is kind of funny that just last week I was day dreaming about what I would do if was suddenly in charge of Microsoft. No, really I was. I think I had read some anti-Microsoft post or new article somewhere and was thinking about the bad rap they get. I was trying to think of what I would do if I was in charge of changing that.  One of the things I thought of was that I would get rid of two version of Windows XP.  It just confuses people and makes Microsoft look like a bunch of greedy bastards.  

Imagine my surprise when just a few days later they announced that there will be SEVEN different versions of Windows Vista.  

1. Starter Edition
2. Home Basic Edition
3. Home Premium Edition
4. Windows Vista Professional Edition
5. Small Business Edition
6. Enterprise Edition
7. Ultimate Edition

Go read the details of each edition over at Ars Technica and then try to imagine your Mom standing in front of a shelf full of different versions of Windows trying to figure it out which version she should buy.  

Imagine the poor Microsoft Tech Support phone guy who now has to try and get Grandpa Fred to tell him which version of Windows he is running and then try to explain to him that version doesn’t support that feature and that he need to upgrade to another version.

John Dvorak over at PCMag.com has an article on how Microsoft Should Confuse the Market More.  I really think he is on to something with the Microsoft Vista Porn Edition.

Seriously, what the hell are they thinking?!  This is the reason everybody hates them.  It isn’t like the different features of each edition are actual physical things that cost more to put into one version or another. Including some feature or other doesn’t make the box bigger or weigh more. It is digital content, it cost money to develop but once it’s created it can be put into every version for the same price.  The only reason to have different versions is to try and see if they can get squeeze some people into paying a little more.  Yes, I understand that the main goal of a business is to make money. But why don’t any of them ever see the benefit of doing the right thing.  They spend millions on marketing but then continue to act in such a way that makes them all look like evil jack-asses.  They don’t even see the marketing value of not looking like evil jack-asses.

I think right now Bill Gates should send out a press release that says, “I just read the memo on the 7 different versions and personally hauled out and shot the marketing vice president that came up with this stupid idea. There will be one version (well two if you count that damn European version that doesn’t include the media player.)”

I think if he did that, all the anti-Microsoft ill it would stave off would actually wind up making them more money in the end, even including the high profile murder trial for him having shot that marketing jerk.    

Fame and Fortune for All!

Seems like everybody I know has something exciting going on at the moment.

We just got out copies of My Virtual Home today. It’s home decorating software that is being developed here. I say here instead of here at Auran because it is technically another company even though it is a lot of the same people. The software is actually free and will be included in next months Australian Better Homes and Gardens magazine. The various home building and furniture manufactures pay to have their products in the software. That user gets the software for free and lays out a virtual version of their house which includes almost everything from what type of door frame types and outlet covers you have. They can then browse through somethink like "couches" until they find one they like that fits well in their living room. They can get order that exact couch from the manufacturer. It is my wife Connie’s first product here as a Senior Tester.

My friend Matthew Ford, a producer here at Auran, was interviewed for a MSNBC article about parents in the game industry and how they handle video games with their own kids. When gamers become parents - How those in the industry cope with issues of sex and violence.

He also has a sidebar article that is linked from the above article which basically summarizes his tips for parents. Parenting and video games: One dad's tips - Game professional offers tips on managing the video game minefield.

I just heard that my friends and former Westwood co-workers at Petroglyph just announced a partnership with Publisher Sega to create an original Real-Time Strategy (RTS) franchise for the PC. SEGA Partners with Petroglyph to Build Blockbuster RTS Franchise.

My friend Greg is going to work for Ubi Soft in China. He asked them about the legislation restricting online play to 3 hours and requiring game developers to put some code in to do that. He said they told him nobody is taking that seriously. There are two government bodies fighting over who has jurisdiction over the online game market since it is a very popular and profitable segment. The two bodies are just trying to prove they are the one with jurisdiction by passing laws that govern it. Although it was all hastily explained to him, he said he also got the impression that it isn’t a passed law, more like a bill being proposed. If you read the article I linked or any of the dozens of others, they all read like this is already passed and companies are hard at work putting in those restrictions which wouldn't appear to be the case.

So, what about me? Well I did say I would stop trying to grow my hair back out and clean myself up if they took me to the Austin Game Developers conference next month. I don’t know if they are taking the bait yet, but I did get a semi-positive "Hmm, you never know" response. I don't think we will be announcing our game there so it will probably only be shown behind closed doors. Austin Texas… Mmmm good Mexican food!

I do know we are looking to hire another level designer so if you know anybody have them email me.

Ookla the Mok

Speaking of the whole file sharing thing, a friend of mine had me listen to a bunch of mp3s last week from a band called Ookla the Mok. The name is taken from the Saturday morning cartoon Thundar the Barbarian from the back in the 80’s. They are a band that plays at sci-fi & comic book conventions. They have released 7 CD’s, won 3 Pegasus awards, did the theme to Disney’s Fillmore and the sound track for the movie Bite Me, Fanboy (which I still havn't seen).

I absolutely loved the album Super Secret; it spoke to the comic book geek in me. And because I think the people that created it should get paid for it if I listen to it I tried to go out and buy it this last weekend. I wish I had looked it up on the web before traveling from music store to music store because as it turns out you can only buy it online. Anyway I did order the album from CDBaby.Com this morning. Unfortunately it looks like some of the other albums are sold out and the news section of the Ookla the Mok site hasn’t been update since the release of their last album on May 8th 2003. I wonder if they still even perform.

Av4st Y3 Scurvy Dogz!

The whole pirated video/music controversy has been getting on my nerves lately. Let me say upfront that I think the people who make the crap should get paid by the people who watch/listen/use it. But I am really getting sick and tired of Hollywood and the music industry making me WANT to go down load an illegal copy of something. I’m sure I am not pointing out anything that hasn’t already been said before when I say that the industry is sitting there in stagnation, afraid to move forward because they are scared of messing with the overly profitable system they have in place. Afraid that the actual people making the product are going to realize there are a awful lot of people in-between them and the customer who aren’t really needed and who are taking more than their fair share of the profit.

According to various sources the United Kingdom is the largest downloader of pirated television shows followed by Australia and then the United States. Living here in Australia now it is so easy to see why. I am sick and tired of hearing about a cool new show and then having to wait 8 months to see it. We just finally saw the season 1 finale of Lost just a few weeks ago. The U.S. premere of season 2 starts the 22nd while we have to wait till sometime NEXT YEAR! I can rent the entire new season of Dr. Who at Blockbuster down the street and it hasn’t even finished airing here yet. And it isn’t just that we are getting the shows late, the television companies here just don’t seem to get that people are really sick of them moving the damn shows around and having them pre-empted every 3rd week for some other show. I accidentally learned who won last season’s Survivor, American Idol, and The Amazing Race before they were finished airing here. (Yes, we started watching Survivor but in my defense it’s become a social thing where a bunch of us take turns going to each other’s places for dinner and to watch the show. As for the other two shows all I can say is that the TV is on while I play game on my computer. Please don’t think any less of me.)

Anyway, the last straw was when I noticed a link on Yahoo’s front page saying “Watch the entire first episode of ‘Supernatural’ now”. So I clicked on it. I like the supernatural thriller type stuff so I figured I’d give it a shot. I clicked the link to watch the show and got: “We’re sorry, this content is restricted to users in a predetermined viewing area.” Well you know what? That just makes me want to go out and download an illegal copy. And then download the entire series with the commercials edited out! Assuming it doesn’t suck, this is the WB we are talking about.

I read that Season one of the new Battlestar Galactica was the most downloaded show ever so far. Easy to see why, it was aired in the UK first and there are a lot more people in the U.S. A lot more people who didn’t want to wait for them to get around to airing so they could watch it.

The solution has been talked for as long as I can remember. It’s the 21st century and I am over us not having the flying cars I was promised in my science fiction, but I am really pissed that the technology isn’t in place for TV on demand. I should be able to turn on my TV by now, sort through a menu, and watch any previously broadcast TV show. All the existing networks just add their content to the overall library for a fee. They pay for that fee with commercials. I tell my TV receiver the relevant information about me and whomever else is living in my house and it shows me relevant commercials. I don’t have to tell them who I am exactly just my information. The networks just know that there a household containing two people one male and one female that spent watched season 1 and half of season 2 of Futurama this weekend. That’s one lesson the marketing demons really need to learn, we would be less reluctant to tell them all of our demographic information if we didn’t have to actually identify ourselves.

Still Staying Away from Zone Alarm

Check Point, the company that now runs Zone Alarm put up the following notice on the top of the Zone Alarm forums:

Zone Labs knows that some of our customers are having issues with the upgrade to ZoneAlarm 6.0, and is working hard to fix the situation.

The cause appears to be related to the upgrade process, not the application itself. Therefore, we recommend users experiencing difficulties uninstall any prior version of ZoneAlarm (v.2.x - v.5.x) residing on their computer system and do a clean installation of their new ZoneAlarm 6.0 product.

We sincerely apologize to any customers affected and appreciate your patience.

I did try to uninstall and do a fresh install back when I had my melt down and that’s when the really big problems began that lead me to have to reformat my computer which still isn't working by the way. I tried to update the bios and now I get a checksum error on boot up. Just on thing after another. Its really depressing.

Well at least they are admitting there is a problem finally. I am still looking into other options. If you are wondering if it is worth it to stick with Zone Alarm I suggest you read a page or two of their forums. It has been weeks now and the negative posts are still piling up.